Do you ever Use your Door Lock? Or do you

Do you ever Use your Door Lock? Or do you side with the other Team?

In his controversial movie Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore picks up his camera and goes around the country trying to find out what it is about American culture that makes people go postal. He shows you how gun crazy and violent Detroit can be, and then crosses over Lake Ontario to get to Toronto to see what the crime scene is like over there. Things are completely different in Canada, even if they are close enough in Toronto to get all the violent programming on TV that Detroit does. There is a small town idyll in the air over in this major Canadian city, and people rarely lock their front doors when they go out. But what if I told you that there were people right here who believed that they never needed to use their door lock - in major cities like New York and LA?

Consider my neighbor Maureen (if I published her last name too, any burglar would be able to look her up and come over). She does well for herself working as an accountant at a major hospital, and she's single; her apartment is something any burglar would give a lot for, for a chance to clean out. And yet, she hasn't ever used her door lock in all the years she's lived in the building. She feels that the building has security, and that should be enough.

Or how about a friend of hers over in San Francisco who lives in a regular single-storied house on a street with no security? She doesn't even own a door lock, even if there are houses on the street that has been targeted over the past year. She has everything to a thief would love - an expensive laptop or two, a home theater, jewelry. Why would people leave themselves open like this?

It's just that they've seen people clamping down like a fortress with expensive security systems, locks all over the place, but still got robbed because they left out a skylight or something minor that a burglar discovered. You can buy a lock for your front door; but what are you going to get for all your windows - bars? They feel door locks are for the self-deluded.

So how many people on average believe in living footloose and fancy free? The State Farm insurance company published a survey a couple of years ago that found that perhaps only one in two people have a habit of using their front door lock in any regular manner. And the FBI says in its yearly crime report that of the 2 million or so robberies that took place last year in this country, about a third were in homes that didn't use a door lock. In fact, people who don't lock are not even aware that regular people who lock their doors would be shocked at what they did. To them, locking your front door is kind of a self-inflicted imprisonment.

It doesn't have to do with the neighborhood you live in either. In some of Manhattan's poshest neighborhoods with security and a doorman, about a quarter of all robberies take place in homes that were left unlocked - either a door or window. But to a friend of mine, keeping the door locked is a sign of a poor welcome. He wants (literally) to have his friends see that his door is always open for them. The best part is, he's a security consultant. He is constantly telling his clients to buy high-tech security systems. To him, it's just something that can't be explained. He knows that there is no reason to trust leaving the front door lock open all time hours of the day is safe. But his mind is comfortable with the idea.